Customer Reviews

Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life

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This is my second taste of Nouwen, and it has been even better than the first ("The Inner Voice of Love"). This book is a valuable component of the amazing turnaround of my depression.

Some Christians say that when you find yourself burnt out and needy, you should go back to the basics. They offer no new solutions, and point you back to daily quiet times and church attendance and service. But here is a book that offers a completely new and refreshing look at God and life. It offers a chance to slow down, to deal with your own heart and soul before rushing to "perform" as a Christian should. Nouwen shows that only when we take time to love and hear ourselves, to become comfortable with who we are and be content with solitute, only after those steps are taken can we reach out to others in true love. We simply must love ourselves and deal with our hurts and needs before we can help and learn from others.

We often reach out to others when we are hurting. We are afraid to deal alone with our needs. We are desperately seeking someone or something to drown out our own voice, to give us new answers. We watch television, listen to music, read books, socialize. This book points us back into ourselves. For we are indeed God's children, and the Spirit is in us. When we learn to be still, we can offer that very stillness and peace to others. We can commune with God in prayer. We can break the illusions of business, of our circumstance ruling us. And we can once again be in touch with ourselves, others, and our God.

This is a life-changing, pain-shattering book. In these pages, we meet the Healer, the God who loves us infinitely and takes the time to fill us up and heal our wounds. We meet the God who gives us the peace to live a centered life, not a chaotic one.

As a Christian for 40 some years, I have searched for ways to more effectively live out my devotion to God. Nouwin's book Reaching Out came into my life after 40 some years in a legalistic cultish church and about 3 years in a more grace-filled church where I made some major moral mistakes.

Nouwin's perceptive and astute words described my experience so well. "...we constantly find ourselves clinging to people, books, events, experiences, projects and plans, secretly hoping that this time it will be different. We keep experimenting with many types of anesthetics, we keep finding "psychic numbing" often more agreeable than the sharpening of our inner sensitivities."

His prompting to turn loneliness into solitude where I can possible hear myself and God has been like water in the desert to me. I look forward to the time usually each day where I set the timer and try to empty my mind of noise and hopefully "descend with the mind into the heart"

I first read this book in college, it was an assigned text for a philosophy course. When I began to read it, I could not put it down. I could not believe that this uplifting book was an assigned text. The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life: From Loneliness to Solitude; From Hostility to Hospitality: and From Illusion to Prayer have changed my life. Since then I have read this book several times. I have bought it for my family members and recommended it to my friends and clients. I recommend this book or any book written by Henri J.M. Nouwen for all human service professionals or anyone seeking a more spiritual life.

Henri J. M. Nouwen opened the path for me to understand how I interact and react to God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the things and people of our world. For many years I have worshipped God. I never realized that I was doing so on my terms, not His. My interaction with other people was based on my need for control, not the needs of others even though I considered myself a caring person. Henri Nouwen opened my eyes to damage I was doing to others and myself. "Reaching Out" changed my attitudes, understanding, and heart.

If you are serious about walking in Jesus's steps, try "Reaching Out". Your walk with God will never be the same.

For anyone starting or exploring their spirituality, this is a great book to get you headed in the correct direction.

As a novice in my spiritual development, I have found this book to be a very useful guide.

It takes me a long time to finish this book. I just could not stop going back to the previous chapters, reflected on it and amazed by the insight and spiritual depth of Nouwen. I read it in bed times, and in the subway. Whenever I go into the lines, my spirit was lifted up high, thanking God who let me know myself and Him more. The 3 movements: from loneliness to solitude; hostility to hospitality; illusion to prayer are all essential elements of the answer to the question "how to live a spirit-filled life in the name of Jesus Christ". Each sections are as wonderful and unmissable as the others. This book gave me a brand new dimension of understanding on "Christian's spiritual life", on caring and interacting with others and on the nature of our Almighty God. I was so impressed that I spent several nights translating around 10 pages in the second part into Chinese and read it in my church fellowship. I thank Him again and again for leading me to read this.

In a culture of distraction, agitation, and surfeit, Nouwen's classic work on the dynamics of spiritual development offers wise, gentle and welcome guidance along the way of simplicity, peace, and mindfulness... truly countercultural.

Reaching Out was written by a mystic, Catholic priest who was born in Holland but spent most of his life in the United States. The author, Henri Nouwen, gained an impressive following during his teaching years at Notre Dame, Yale and Harvard Universities and wrote 40 books on spirituality ([...]). In 1975, while teaching at Yale, Nouwen wrote Reaching Out which included a special edition inclusion of Beyond the Mirror - an account of Nouwen's perceived near-death experience and the spiritual enlightenment which resulted in some of the views expressed in Reaching Out.
According to Nouwen (1975), the path of spirituality is a journey between polarities in three separate areas. The first area includes the distance between solitude and loneliness; this encompasses reaching toward self. The second area involved reaching toward others and is described as the polarity between hospitality and hostility. Finally, Nouwen discusses the third area, prayer verses illusion, the reaching toward God. The author explains that each individual finds himself somewhere between the extreme poles at different times of his life but that our goal, as Christians, is to remain on the side of solitude, hospitality, and prayer.
Nouwen (1975) posited that loneliness is the sad condition of the fallen human heart which causes us to react to others in selfish ways. He explains that we feel lonely no matter how many people we have around us because it is a condition of the heart and attitude rather than a lack of fellowship. Solitude, on the other hand, is described by Nouwen as a place where we are comfortable with our selves and are therefore able to be comfortable with others. In a place of solitude we are no longer desperately reaching out for others to meet our needs, rather our focus is turned inward and looks to God as our source.
The goal of living a victorious Christian life requires that we have a hospitable attitude toward mankind and nature, rather than approaching it with hostility (Nouwen, 1975). When we begin seeing our friends, employers, children and acquaintances as travelers who are passing through this life with us, we are more able to treat them with hospitality. This attitude self-corrects the hostile attitudes of ownership and debt toward one another. For example, rather than seeing children as your possessions, which will in turn cause pride when they do well, and shame when they do poorly, we should see them as fellow travelers whom we have been given the task of caring for and raising. Nouwen explains that this helps us correctly discipline them when they are young as well as let them go when they are adults.
Lastly, Nouwen (1975) speaks about the importance of the last polarity: illusion verses prayer. Not only was this the most important area to discuss, according to Nouwen, it was the area he was the most familiar with since he worked with the Trappist Monks in the Abby of Genesse in New York (www.henrinouwen.org). Nouwen had a great deal of experience seeking expertise in the art of prayer and stated that it was the most basic task of our lives and yet the most illusive one. He wrote: "...it is very hard to come in touch with it, to get a grasp on it, to get hold of it, or even - to put a finger on it." (p. 84)

Nouwen is at his very best in this classic work. Readers will be captured by the spiritual depths of this book as Nouwen probes the three movements of the spiritual life. I have taught this in a small group format several times with great response and discussion. This book ranks in my top five favorites of all time, a book complex enough to provide fresh meaning each time it is read. Highly recommend!

I've been reading Henri Nouwen's Reaching Out over the last week or so and it's been impacting me deeply.

I feel like I have been lonely for as long as I can remember. There have been moments thick with the physical presence of friends & family. And there were times where I managed to gain enough attention or popularity to almost muffle the pangs of isolation in my gut. I used to think of those "distracted" periods as high points - when I'd achieved the connectedness I craved. I'm realizing more and more that the times of greatest singular loneliness in life were also the times where God's hand pressed heaviest on my heart.

However, until Nouwen's Reaching Out, I don't think I have encountered any voice (pastor, friend or counselor) telling me that this aching was natural, necessary & right. I'm an American Evangelical! If something doesn't feel good, it must be wrong! Reaching Out has really begun to play a connecting role in matching my awareness of God's presence in the "dark" to Nouwen's assertion that loneliness is not only obligatory, but indispensable.

Nouwen says that without "solitude of the heart," we are not even capable of loving people in the way they deserve to be loved. After reading the first three chapters I went & told my wife that I wanted to love her because she deserves my love - because she exists.

I confessed that most of my love for her is twisted & compromised of what I think I need from her, & what I want to get out of her. She said, "I think most of us love that way." I said, "But wouldn't it be incredible if we could let go of all that & love each other entirely for who the other is?" I was "lucky" enough to be unlucky in love till my twenties, so growing up I didn't have romance to hide in. Married now, I have quickly learned how to look to my wife to hide from myself, my loneliness, and God residing in the midst of that dreaded isolation.

Slowly, I'm trying to train myself to stop running from the loneliness. Inside the aching, the silence, the singular awareness of one's own disconnected (in some ways) reality, there is a voice of Truth who is whispering identity, purpose and love at the core of our being. I want to listen for that voice...


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